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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Friday, April 20, 2012

2050? Ponder 2100

According to the UN’s population division, [China's] nationwide fertility rate will continue to decline, reaching 1.51 in 2015-20. In contrast, America’s fertility rate is 2.08 and rising.

The difference between 1.56 and 2.08 does not sound large. But over the long term it has a huge impact on society. Between now and 2050 China’s population will fall slightly, from 1.34 billion in 2010 to just under 1.3 billion in 2050. This assumes that fertility starts to recover. If it stays low, the population will dip below 1 billion by 2060. In contrast, America’s population is set to rise by 30% in the next 40 years. China will hit its peak population in 2026. No one knows when America will hit its population peak.

With all the caveats about projecting that far into the future, we could have from 60% of China's population to more people than China! Will China have twice the GDP per-capita as America then? With a population older than our population? Because if not, China's lead in gross GDP will not last and we will regain that title well before 2100 rolls around (unless India is the one to surpass us in gross GDP).

Don't write us off. Of course, if power transitions are dangerous periods, let's prepare for a couple as we might lose the number one slot before regaining it.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.